Gary Shogren's Blog

Let’s label this ministry as: “Hi homeless friend! Would you like some breakfast?”

On Saturday, I go to the grocer and buy a kilo of local farmer’s cheese, a couple of loaves of bread, and big bottles of iced tea. Then I make up sandwiches for 25 or so people, gather paper cups, 2-3 New Testaments in a simplified version, maybe some second-hand clothes.

On the streets of San José, Sunday around 7am, I leave the car in a parking lot and head out with a jammed-full backpack. I take basic safety precautions, such as keeping all the people in my field of vision – but since I go out early, most of my contacts are still docile after their Saturday night. The street people migrate from one spot to another, so they aren’t necessarily where I last left them.

Then suddenly, there they are. It takes a second for the brain to register, That pile of rags is actually a man; that cardboard box is someone’s house.

Homeless man in San José, file photo

Wherever I see a cluster of people I stop and ask, Would you like some breakfast? I used to ask, “Are you hungry?”, but I switched my phrasing (more…)

One of those, “Wish I had said this, in this way, but there’s no way I could have improved on this statement by Russell Moore –

I think sometimes pastors and leaders simply take whatever they find objectionable in the culture and rail against it. They sometimes use the language of decline, where we’re in the worst situation we’ve ever been in before, and these very dire terms—which is not true. If you look at every generation of the Church you see older people complaining that the next generation is just going to pieces. That’s always been the case in every history of the Church. It’s fear-mongering. It’s easy to stand up and rail against other people’s sins in a way that can cause your congregation, or your Bible study group, or whatever it is that you have responsibility over, to think “Man he is really hard against sin,” when in reality, we’re just hard against other people’s sins, and we don’t have the courage to address the sins that are going on right in front of us. (emphasis added)

Gary again: preaching about THEIR sins is always going to be easier and less likely to get you fired than preaching about OUR sins. This may be why I have heard:

plenty of warnings against gay marriage, but little about the abuse that happens in Christian marriages;

a lot of denunciations of hateful Islamists, but little condemnation of Christians who hate the haters;

a lot about those lazy people on welfare, but little about Christians who spend every spare minute and dollar on their own recreation.

The Bible is a sharp sword, and meant to slice into Our consciences as well as Theirs.

Full article “Engaging the Culture in the New Year,” HERE. Russell Moore was for a while in the news, because he spoke harshly against Christian supporters of Donald Trump, but he is consistently one of the best evangelical spokespersons out there on public ethics.

Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

Spiritual growth comes through Spirit-power and direction, applied from the inside out as God rewrites our heart, soul and mind to conform to his righteousness. Revivals of history have come as the result of prayer and the Spirit’s power; most are absent of any persecution as a proximate cause: the Reformation, Great Awakening, the Wesleyan Revival, the Second Great Awakening, the Korean Revival, the Welsh Revival.

Is persecution good for what ails the church? Here’s the word on the street:

Viewpoint A: Everyone knows that persecution purifies the church –

Therefore, if revival is to come, it will be through suffering.

Therefore, persecution is a good, a benefit.

Therefore, the committed Christian should pray for persecution to fall on their country.

Now, I know of no verse where Christians should hope for or pray for persecution. Nor is there a passage that says, “If you pray for revival, you’d better duck, God will send you tribulation.” These viewpoints strikes me as two of these Bible interpretations which are, to use the British phrase, “too clever by half.” It’s similar to the one I’ve heard people say, that we shouldn’t pray for patience – after all, if we do, God will send trials on us! I’m stymied, how a Christian could balk at praying for a fruit of the Spirit, or imagine that God will use our sincere prayer in order to play a trick on us!

The Bible is clear, and 2000 years of history give the same message –

Revival comes with or without persecution.

That is, revival and persecution do not follow a strict cause and effect. Nor are they typically correlated.

If there is correlation, it’s the question of the chicken and the egg – sometimes persecution comes because the church is growing and lively.

Persecution does not necessarily result in purification or vitality.

Persecution may be an impediment to church growth as much as it is a spur to growth.

People who pray for, seek or volunteer for persecution are on thin ice.

When it comes to the complex issue of labor and management, the Bible has answers. But are we asking it the right questions?

In the old joke, a man wanted to know God’s will from the Scripture. I’ll open the Bible at random and point, and that will be God’s direction for me. When he opened his eyes, his finger was resting on the verse, “Judas went out and hanged himself.” I’ll try it again, he said: this time he opened to the verse, “Go thou and do likewise.”

God’s Word is true, but those verses were not the answer to that man’s question!

Yet, we commit the same error on the topic of labor: most of the teaching I have run across is based squarely on three Bible passages on the theme of SLAVERY, texts that only indirectly have to do with employers and their employees or labor and management. (more…)

It is no simple thing to preach the Word of God. Powerful dark forces are arrayed to draw us away from our task. They regularly succeed in doing so.

I bring this up because this week I saw several FB references to “what [famous North American preacher] Rob Bell said in his book Love Wins” and it took me a while to track down who was Rob Bell and what it was he said. (more…)